Sunday, March 20, 2011

I like to rebut a skeptic who said that Anesthestic awareness can explain all of the verdical perceptions Pam Reynolds had before and during her surgery. He/she says that she could hear the drill itself and that she was able to from awareness know what size it was and what it looked like. The very big problems with this explanations are these:

1) Only a tiny percentage of patients report anesthestic awareness out of thousands who are in cardiac arrest. 2) The known fact that her eyes were taped shut during this procedure so you would have to assume that somehow through her hearing alone if she could hear at all that is with the molded speakers in her ears. That she could imagine what this saw somehow looked like.

He/she says

If anesthetic awareness was operating, the sound of the saw, its sensation and vibration through bone conduction, and the movements of the surgeon’s hand, could all communicate significant information about the size, weight, and general function of the instrument. It would have to be hand held. The sound would give an indication of the size of the motor. The movements and actions would give cues as to the function of the instrument. Likewise, hearing the comment about veins._________________

That is assuming he wasn't given enough anesthetics, it order for this to work you have to assume that she wasn't given enough anesthetics. However, it looks like she was under heavy anesthesia making it medically impossible for her to have a consciousness memory of the experience.

My response- The visual phenomena that is reported in the blind sometimes is no near similar to blind people who have near death experiences/out of body experiences. Also as far as I know many patients were indeed blind from birth and had nde/obe.

Then says,

The fact is that blind people still have a functional occipital lobe, which adapts to conveying internal information in a "sight like way" without actual sight being possible. Someone truly blind from birth would be unable to distinguish this from "sight" unless they later had actual sight restored."

But here's the rub many of them didn't have a functional occipital lobe but were still able to perceive clearly during there nde/obe.

For an example of a case of a blind patient having a nde/obe go here her optic nerve was completely destroyed.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Skeptics have asked me what would be evidence that would show strongly that there is no mind and brain separation. My answer to that is if there was evidence of consciousness permanately erased after radicial damage coupled with approaching death. However that hasn't happen what we have in cases of people with radical personality damages changes after strokes, and brain damage however we have cases that show memories often come back when we approach death. Read about those cases here if you haven't done so i posted this link awhile back.

Also i want to talk about the observer in Quantum Physics, what it means is not just human observers but all living observers that interact with a mechanical instrument such as a telescope. Its been assumed that just a telescope can cause the collapse in the wave function so for example the moon doesn't exist with just the telescope present. But that isn't true that experiment has already been done to try to disprove that living observers had to be present. But it looks like indeed living observers not only have to be present but they must make the observation themselves by looking into the telescope for the moon to exist. If they don't look at the moon the moon will not exist. This strongly suggest that consciousness which is what were using to see the moon has some independent existence from matter. Also it has its own degree of freedom. This conclusion is not good for materialists, naturalists, physicalists who assert that consciousness has not real important role in reality.